Year2-20202022

What a fun couple of weeks we have had! The children have settled back well this half term and we are racing quickly towards Christmas!  They have worked hard with their learning about the Great Fire of London and now know lots of amazing facts. Please use our knowledge organiser below to quiz your child and see what they have learnt about how the fire started and why it spread so quickly. They should also be able to tell you about how London changed after the fire.  

Year 2 Surprising Journeys Knowledge Organiser 2021

We have also had a great time learning about the surprising journey of the Rainbow Crow in the lovely book  ‘The Crow’s Tail’ written by Naomi Howarth. We have just written our own story based on Michael Morpurgo’s beautiful book ‘Coming Home’, where the children used the skills that they had learnt from our sentence stacking lessons to write their own exciting journey story. 

In our next unit, we will use our history learning to write some historical diary entries about the Great Fire of London. 

Hey Ewe!

Christmas is quickly approaching and we have begun talking about our Christmas play. Due to the ongoing need to keep everyone well during the Christmas period, we are again doing this by video. Children have been invited to take part in the play as either speaking actors, actors with no lines, narrators, dancers or instrumentalists. Please reassure children that there will be plenty of time to practise and that there will be no live audience to worry about. We will send lines out today (Friday) and will begin rehearsals next week. Parts will be split across the threes classes and most of those with speaking parts will only have a few lines to learn. Please support your child in learning any lines that we send home. Thank you. 

We will require some simple costumes and a letter is also coming home about this. There is no expectation to buy expensive costumes and we would encourage you to use items that you or the children already have at home. If you have any difficulties, please speak to your child’s class teacher as we may be able to support with items that we have in school. 

PE

Our PE day will continue to be Wednesday but we will be using our hall slot to rehearse for the play so will be doing outdoor PE lessons on the Wednesday, where this is possible. Please ensure children are dressed in appropriate outdoor PE kit on these days. They should no longer be wearing shorts and should now be in jogging bottoms. Coats should be brought in everyday and children can also bring in named hats, scarfs, gloves and ear muffs. 

Election Call!

Please remember that the closing dates for applications for School Council, Eco-Committee and Christian Voice Ambassadors is: Wednesday 24th November. Completed forms MUST be handed in by this date (and ideally before). Children are also encouraged to make posters to promote themselves amongst their classes. These will be put up in classrooms and children will be given the opportunity to tell their classes why they think they would be good at the role. We are delighted that the children will again be able to take on these important roles to support our year group and school community. 

Thank you for all of your support. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at year2@stmarksce.org.uk

Year 2 Team 

As part of our ‘Beauty Inside and Out’ project this half term, geography has been a key focus for us.  We have been looking at our school grounds and the Danebury Road area immediately out the front of the school.  Next week, we will be going for a walk around the Hatch Warren area to look at what human and physical features we can identify and develop the children’s fieldwork skills.  The children will be out exploring for no longer than one hour.  Please keep an eye on the weather forecast for the day and ensure your children has a warm or waterproof coat, as is necessary.

As this is a local walk, we do not require further consent as this is covered under the original consent forms that you have already signed.  If you have any questions about these walks, please do speak to your class teacher.  The walks will take place on the following dates:

2BT- Tuesday 12^th October 2021

2B- Tuesday 12^th October 2021

2R- Wednesday 13^th October 2021

2R will have PE as usual on Wednesday afternoon but should come in wearing normal school uniform rather than their PE kit. 

We are really looking forward to discovering the beauty outside of our school and will share our learning with you about our Geography, and other aspects of our curriculum, next week. 

Have a lovely weekend! 😊 

What a wonderful start we’ve had to Year 2! The children are settling in well and are beginning to get used to the new routines of Year 2. They have enjoyed getting to know new friends and their teachers, and have loved being able to meet all of their friends across Year 2 at playtimes and lunchtimes. We have also been lucky enough to have had two Year Group worships where we were all able to meet in the hall and see each other in person rather than on a screen. A further excitement, was being able to sing together; something we have all missed and really enjoyed!

We have begun our new topic, ‘Beauty Inside and Out‘, where we have started with the geography part of our topic work by learning about our local area. So far, we have explored inside our school grounds and located features of our school grounds on aerial photographs and maps. Later, in the half term, we will have a ‘mini trip’ out around Hatch Warren to explore the beauty in our local environment and to complete our mapwork. We will also link in our science work on materials, and carry out investigations on the properties of materials, to pick the most suitable materials for items that we need to take on our trip with us. Please see our Knowledge Organiser and Topic Web below for more details: 

Year 2 Beauty Inside and Out Topic Web

Year 2 Knowledge Organiser Autumn 1

A couple of notes: 

• Homework will be set on Google Classroom in your child’s class. This will begin on Friday 17th September and children will be given a week to complete it. This will be a mixture of Numbots, BugClub and maths/reading tasks.
• Work for children who are isolating (but well enough to complete work) will be found on the Year 2 page of Google Classroom. Please note that we will get this online as quickly as we can once we are aware of your circumstances.
• PE starts on Wednesday 15th September for Year 2- the children should come into school in their PE kit each Wednesday.
• Children will be issued with reading books each week and will visit the library each week to pick a library book on a Monday.
• RWI book bag books matched to each child’s phonic learning will come home from Monday 20th September, once we have begun our RWI lessons. These lessons will be in addition to our whole class phonics sessions that are already happening twice each day. 
• Please make sure your child’s reading books are in school everyday so that they can be read with. 
• Please make sure that children bring a coat into school each day as the weather is very changeable and we do our best to get outside as much as possible even on wet days.

We have all really enjoyed our first week back and look forward to getting to know both you and the children better in the coming weeks. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns, using the year group email: year2@stmarksce.org.uk

Thanks for your support, 

Mrs Rosso, Miss Burgess, Mrs Brackenridge and Mrs Tickle